Together Again

The view from the back seat of a car is different from the one behind the wheel.

I usually drive alone, and on long drives, my hands are on the steering wheel with my focus on the road ahead. This trip was different, and it wasn’t all bad.

There was a death in my husband’s family. The cousin who died was a gentle, but strong soul who welcomed me into the family decades earlier. Hers and her husband’s wedding gift was the first to arrive many years ago. That welcoming gesture set the tone for years of friendship.

I wanted to honor that connection by attending her funeral. It was nine hours away in Mississippi.

I drove to Nashville where I joined my brother-in-law and his wife for the rest of the journey. They offered me the “shotgun” seat of honor, the front passenger seat. Throughout the long trip, we shared stories of those who we knew and loved and were no longer with us.

The trip came together seamlessly. The three of us had clear schedules but more importantly, we had the desire to come together once more as an extended family.

We wanted to go through the ritual of standing together at the funeral home as we had for so many who had gone on ahead of us. Our generation shared history. We felt a longing for the time when those whose names, now on tombstones, stood near in full flesh.

“For everything there is a season…”

Our destination was Vicksburg, the town known to the Union Army as “the Gibraltar of the South,” for its tenacious Civil War battle. The ghost of that fight remains even now. As we rode, I wondered what ghosts might be waiting for me.

My first trip to Vicksburg was in the 1970s when my future husband gave me a tour of his hometown. In our early married years, we visited the area regularly. Part of my husband longed to recreate the days of friendship and connection that the town represented to him.

Later we returned to that town as parents, and together, we raised our sons through high school.

It was different, though. The brief, early trips were nostalgia-filled.  Living there again, however, was challenging as we tried to recreate for our sons the childhoods that had been ours.

But real life was different from what we recalled. That past we remembered was in a particular time and place. No matter how we tried, we were attempting to recreate a time and space that was only fully real in our memories.

It was much like trying to catch a half-remembered dream that lingers on the edge of consciousness after we’ve awakened.

Memories. So many memories. Vicksburg was now a part of me too. Would being there again stir those feelings of longing for me?

Goodbyes

The funeral went well. We said our goodbyes, and I saw friends from long ago, as well as family members.

My generation is now a little thicker in the middle and a little more stooped. I spoke with many people who knew my husband. I was glad that we came to honor the connections that had been so important to him. He would have been pleased.

On the trip home, I asked to sit in the back seat. I ruminated on my time spent in a space that was so important to my husband, my sons, and me.

The view from the back was very different. Rather than looking at the road ahead, I gazed at the tall pines and thick undergrowth whizzing by.

I felt surprisingly detached from Vicksburg. This was the first visit where I didn’t feel the need to drive by the homes of those long gone. I didn’t need physical representations of the memories anymore. It was kind of a relief.

When I touched my husband’s headstone and thanked him for a beautiful life together, a few tears rolled down my cheek. The knee-buckling sobs of previous visits were missing, and I found myself not missing the grief that had enveloped me for so long. That too was kind of a relief.

I shifted in my back seat and, like the lookout in the crow’s nest of an ancient ship, I shifted my gaze from the side window to the windshield.

Suddenly, I realized the point of the trip. Closure.

Closure is a beautiful thing. It’s like putting the period at the end of a very long sentence. That too brings relief.